


When You Wake Up to This (The Sleepwalking Remix)

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: kamikazeremix, Gen, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 09:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since the car accident, Dean Smith has felt like a stranger in his own life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Wake Up to This (The Sleepwalking Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [When You Wake Up to This](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/13193) by Kalliel. 



Dean's been reading articles. At his desk, when he's supposed to be researching sales trends and fine-tuning the marketing plan for the next financial year, Dean Smith finds himself wading through the dense text of articles from medical journals. Psychology. Psychiatry. He never thought about it much before, his sanity. He doesn't remember thinking about much of anything other than school and work; his family and old friends are vague shapes in his memory, so nearly absent they wouldn't cast a shadow. He thinks about his sanity now, now that he's pretty sure he let it slip away.

He goes to work every day at the Battle Creek branch of Sandover Bridge and Iron, and the facts in his memory tell him he's been there for two years. He has two years worth of e-mail in Outlook and his chair is worn into the shape of his body, but he doesn't know anybody. He knows their faces and their names, but everything inside him says that he never met them until after the accident. The accident, when he woke up in the emergency room waiting area, confused and combative and dressed like a construction worker. The accident that didn't make any sense given that woman he hit refused to press charges, and Dean's Prius was safe in its parking spot in front of his condo.

The accident, when everything changed.

In the week after the accident, Dean diagnosed himself with a head injury and made an appointment with a neurologist because he wasn't about to waste his time with primary care. He was poked and scanned, and the doctor showed him evidence of concussions from two or three years in the past but nothing recent. Nothing that would have caused Dean's life to change overnight. Dean laughed it off, reassured the doctor he'd already given up the extreme sports, shrugged off the suggestion that he seek treatment for emotional trauma.

Dean Smith wasn't willing to believe that the trauma of an accident in which he'd barely been bruised had deconstructed him so thoroughly, but he started reading anyway. The case studies he found that matched some of his own symptoms began to scare him, like reading ghost stories when you're living in a haunted house. He read about fugue states and psychotic breaks, and he sat staring into the webcam on his laptop, staring at the blank canvas of himself until he believed.

He goes home late every night to a condo that could belong to anybody, and he can't find any trace of himself to anchor him. He puts on his crisp shirts, his ties and suspenders and perfectly shined shoes and goes into work every morning with caffeine buoying him up because if there's one thing Dean Smith knows it's how to create a brand, craft the perfect image, and sell the dream.

In Dean's dreams, the world is sharp and clear. Like a knife, like glass. He fights and he kills and he bleeds; he drinks and he fucks and he drives. He drives and drives and he's never alone. Sometimes his dreams feel more real than his waking life. Sometimes he's afraid, not of the dreams. Sometimes he's afraid of what he might do.

_"Take it from me," he begs of a man in a trench coat. "Take it from me, please, fucking take it from me."_

He's eating carbs again, because life is too difficult to function without pad thai, so he joins a gym. On his way to the racquetball courts, he passes the glass-walled exercise studio and sees the woman from the accident. The woman he hurt. She's sitting in front of the class with her eyes closed, her face serene, and he stops to watch her with a yearning in his gut that feels like more than lust. It's more than he's felt for any human being in as long as he can remember.

She opens her eyes, a flash of recognition in her face, and Dean hurries down the hall. The schedule Dean picks up from the front desk lists her teaching Tuesday and Thursday evenings, so on Thursday he waits for her. It's snowing, finally beginning to look like winter, and she comes through the doors with a thick blue parka over her light clothes, a dusting of snow on the rolled-up yoga mat in her hands. She sees Dean waiting for her, and he expects anger or irritation but she gives him a smile, sad and sweet.

"Mr. Smith," she says with a catch in her voice. "It's a surprise to see you here."

"Ms. Braeden--"

She winces at the name and stops him with a light touch on his arm. "Lisa, please."

"Lisa. I want to apologize again for the accident." Dean shifts uncomfortable, suddenly unable to find the facade of himself that he sells every day. "I...I hope you're doing okay."

"I'm fine," she says gently. "We're fine. Are--are you okay?"

 _I don't know what I am_ , he wants to say. _I don't think I'm okay. I don't know if I'm dangerous. I don't know myself, but I think I know you._ But he's not yet crazy enough to say those things, not out loud. "I wasn't hurt," he says instead.

She nods and looks down, and when she looks up he sees a strange sheen of tears in her eyes. "Listen, do you have plans for Christmas Day?"

It's a week from Christmas, and Dean hasn't bought any gifts because he doesn't know who he'd give them to. Every time he tries to think about his family his mind skitters away, and it's just one more thing that he knows is wrong with him. "Does looking over sales projections count as plans?"

Lisa arches one eyebrow and stares at Dean as if he's one of those nonsense pictures that turn into a horse or a butterfly if you look at them long enough, just the right way. He thinks she might be the only person to see him for what he is. "No, not really." She takes a deep breath, still steadily watching Dean. "Will you come to my house? Nobody should be alone, and it'll just be me and my son. And maybe one other friend, if he can make it."

The invitation feels as strange as the rest of his life, but Dean can't say no. "It would be my pleasure," he says, meaning it more than he'd intended. "Should I bring red wine or white?"

She shakes her head. "You don't have to bring anything." She pulls a piece of paper and pen from her purse and writes a few lines before handing it over. "Five-thirty."

She gives him a shaky smile and touches his arm again before walking off toward the exercise rooms. The paper in Dean's hand lists an address. No phone number, so he can't cancel.

At home, sitting in the blank beige and stainless steel emptiness of his condo, Dean realizes that when he was talking to Lisa he felt more like a real person than he had in months. He thinks that maybe the problem isn't in his mind but in the life he built around himself. He pulls up his bank account and stock portfolio and figures out how much he can make liquid by the first of the year.

His job is a cage and his condo is a cage. His suits and ties are a cage, and he's let the cage turn him into an animal. Inside his mind, in his dreams. He'll be safe as long as he sets himself free. He drafts an e-mail to the VP of his division, giving his two-weeks notice and outlining his plan to complete his outstanding work by the end of the month.

He's going to take his Prius on the road and find out just how good the gas milage really is. He's going to drive and drive and find his own real life, and he wonders if maybe, just maybe, Lisa will one day let him come home to her.


End file.
